Equal Opportunity...Yes or No
Do I believe in equal opportunity or do I believe that opportunity exists. There is a difference. I don't think there is equal opportunity, and that it is impossible to create. But so many people of all belief systems tout the need for opportunity to be equal. Is that really possible?
In the grand scheme of things Equal Opportunity is a myth. To have equal opportunity everything from lifes beginning must be equal. You must know the same people, have the same education and have the same likes and dislikes. In short you must all be identical in every way. This just “ain’t gonna happen”. There is no way that even two people can have the exact same experiences, the exact same everything, not even identical twins. If we could do that we would also have outcome equality. You would have equality starting (opportunity) and equality at the end (outcome).
What Americans call equal opportunity is most simply put as follows. Each and every person has a set of gifts, talents hopes and dreams. Given these items there should be no limits placed on what is available to the individual. By honest hard work the individual should be able to reach the full limit of his/her potential as a human being and a member of the human society. Nothing should be allowed to stand in their path.
Good examples from the literary world would be Howard Roark (The fountainhead), Hank Reardon (Atlas Shrugged). Examples from the sports world are Jackie Robinson, Henry Aaron and Lou Gehrig. There are many examples of people who have succeeded in life by hard work, and honesty. Sure Jackie Robinson was held back and discriminated against, but he kept trying and overcame and persevered.
None of these people demanded and equal outcome, they demanded and for the most part got, an opportunity to show what they could do when allowed to utilize their full potential. They demonstrated that people, given the right opportunity will excel, will prosper and will contribute. They need the equal opportunity to excel, not the guaranty of all being equal.
They're both good directions to head, but they're not goals b/c we will never have full equal opportunity or zero crime.
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This sentence poses a problem because it relies on the all-too-frequent assumption that people who are poor are really just lazy and therefore deserve to live in poverty. This sort of mentality is exactly why Conservative efforts against equal opportunity legislation and social programs inevitably fail: those who oppose such measures inadvertently make the mistake painting themselves as ignorant and callous, including the author of this article. His argument started out well, but after that sentence everything else was just a downward spiral into the same old tired patterns Republicans have been using and failing with for years.
Insisting that poor people are just lazy is a bad tactic, and it actually works against the people who resort to using it in political debate by making them appear cold and heartless. If someone wants to create a persuasive argument against equal opportunity, they're going to have to do so using other arguments, because that one doesn't work.
Refraining from using hyperbolic language (such as applying the word "Communism" to anything that involves community effort) wouldn't hurt, either.
1. Take a serious problem with the country and try to associate it with a particular politician.
2. Make the argument about hurting evil-doers to appeal to people who feel like they're at the bottom of the pecking order and long for a chance to hurt someone else in the way they feel the world hurts them.
Increasingly, the poor *are* lazy, mentally as well as physically. Why wouldn't they be? If you have an entitlement mentality, it's "unfair" to expect you to work for the things you want. Why should you have to put in effort to acquire that to which you are already entitled?
How are you going to become wealthy and successful if you're mentally and physically lazy? So, while all poor people may not be mentally/physically lazy, there, logically, *should* be a large tendency for mentally/physically lazy people to be poor.
And, increasingly, a lot of poor people are poor because they lack self-discipline.
It's a lack of self-discipline. And that's not something you can just snap your fingers and decide to have.